Best Travel Option

Hello, We plan to travel to Tokyo 12/15 next month. We will arrive at narita airport. Spend 4 days in Tokyo and travel to Kyoto for 1 week and will travel day trip to Osaka. Then back to Tokyo for 4 days before heading home.Should we get the JR rail pass or is there other better options.

Comments

A Tokyo-Kansai round trip almost makes a 7 day JR pass pay off, but not quite. But 7 days in Kansai is a good amount of time - if you take a day trip to Himeji for example, you'd start to get some good savings on a JR Pass as well as see Japan's finest castle and beautiful Kokoen Garden.https://goo.gl/65ZtRi

And if you take a day trip to see Hiroshima & Miyajima, you'd get some tremendous savings, though you'd need an early morning start.https://goo.gl/fAz4ax

But if you are already seeing Tokyo, you can mostly skip Osaka during the day, since it's pretty much a clone. You can see the city though in the evening after a day of sightseeing in Kyoto - that's when the city comes alive and there are some very good places like Dotonbori and Shinesekai, plus the great night views from atop the Umeda Sky Bldg and Abeno Harukas Bldg.https://goo.gl/XE5R94

You can see train schedules, times, fares, connections etc athttp://www.hyperdia.comUnder "More Options", be sure to uncheck the Nozomi box if on a full JR Pass since you can't ride that train using the JR Pass.

Thank you for the detail information. It really help us to plan our trip. It seems it make senses to get 2 weeks JR green pass to travel to different regions. Our arrival time to Tokyo is 8:00 PM local time, will JR train still be operating to Tokyo station? We will be spending total 8 days in Tokyo. Any day trip and local must see recommendation. - Thanks again!!

You would need to significantly add to your plans if you wanted a 2 week pass to pay off.The trip to Hiroshima/Miyajima from Kansai alone would be enough. But there are other options as well - from Tokyo there are many, including Nikko, Hakone, the Fuji 5 Lakes area, Karuizawa, Kusatsu, Izu, Kamamura/Enoshima, Kawagoe, Takao, Okutama, Yokohama, the Ushiku Great Buddha, Nokogiriyama, Minakami, Showa Kinen Park, and more - with varying levels of savings. You'd also need other regional passes for the Mt Fuji area.You could also go to Kansai from Tokyo by way of Kanazawa, which is a really nice city to visit.You should make your plans according to where you want to go of course, and not simply to make a rail pass pay off.You can try putting in various ideas in this calculator to see what makes a rail pass pay off for you.https://www.japan-guide.com/railpass/

Thanks for the detail info again. My original thought was to get JR pass which I hope it will provide us convenient to travel everywhere with 1 rail pass, I am not too worry to make a green rail pass will pay off. Now I have better understanding of the transportation system. I think I have enough information to plan my trip but will post if I have additional questions. I will plan to have couple of day trip as recommended. Thanks again!!